


Kill me with spites; yet we must not be foes

by classicallymar



Category: Dead Poets Society (1989)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Extended Scene, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Multi, Smoking, in that a certain rat gets punched, the poets are sad but what else is new
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-03-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:40:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23351833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/classicallymar/pseuds/classicallymar
Summary: On the day that Richard Cameron ratted out the Dead Poets Society, Charlie Dalton punched him - and sealed his expulsion.An exploration of the emotions and thoughts of the other four poets in the room.(title from William Shakespeare's Sonnet 40)
Relationships: Charlie Dalton/Steven Meeks/Knox Overstreet, Todd Anderson/Neil Perry
Comments: 4
Kudos: 21





	1. Todd

**Author's Note:**

> So many thanks to ConsiderableColors, who let me bounce ideas off of them and encouraged me to write this.
> 
> Also - polyamorous Meeks RISE. thank you for your cooperation.

Todd is careful not to say much. He always has been, but while he and the rest of the (loyal) initiates wait for Cameron to show up, he is especially careful not to say things he doesn't mean. He doesn't normally smoke, either, but it's something to do with his hands - other than watch them tremble - and it reminds him of Neil. 

Everything does, even the dusty attic where they're meeting now, even though Neil never came up here - not with Todd, anyway. 

Todd wonders what Neil would say to the cigarette in Todd's hand. Maybe he would have chuckled a bit, maybe remembered Todd choking on pipe smoke, or maybe he would have held out his hand to take a drag. It doesn't matter now - Todd keeps trying to tell himself that what Neil would have done doesn't matter now - but it does. It matters too much, now that he's not here to do it. 

The light from the window streams through clouds of dust that would normally have stayed settled on the suitcases until the end of spring semester, but because Todd is here, waiting, holding his breath, the dust is moving, dancing through the air. He takes another drag. 

Charlie is talking, and Todd is trying to listen, he is, but there isn't much of anything to listen to. Todd knows that they don't stand a chance if Cameron told Mr. Nolan everything. Todd knows they never stood a chance in the first place. 

Neil made it seem possible, though. Neil, with his passion for acting, larger than life, and the awe that he allowed to wash over him while he recited poetry - memorized more often than from a page - Neil made Todd believe that anything could be possible. That someday he might finally step out from behind his brother's shadow, the shadow of his father's job and everything else that got in the way of his family actually caring about him for more than a few short minutes - if that. 

Todd can't look at anything for too long. He catches sight of an ember at the end of his cigarette and he wants it to go out - he doesn't want to stop smoking it, not really. It would have been nice, in any other situation, just to sit with the other poets and smoke a cigarette. Around Charlie, this is normal. Sneaking around, doing dumb things for the hell of it. But Todd is always so acutely aware that he's living in a world that no longer contains Neil Perry. 

He also knows that the culture that killed the love of his life is about to destroy everything else that made Todd's life at Welton worth living. 

Someone comes up the stairs, and Todd does have the presence of mind to stamp out his cigarette and help to wave away the smoke before they all realize that it's just Cameron - they know he knows they smoke. They can, at least, trust him with that. 

Then Charlie is yelling, and Cameron is yelling back and Todd tries to follow the conversation but the only thing he can think is 'Neil, Neil, Neil, this isn't what Neil wanted,' until he's yelling too because there's nothing else he can do. 

Now he's glad his cigarette has gone out, because he's not sure he can breathe regular air, let alone cigarette smoke, and he can't concentrate on anything because he's looking at the suitcases. He thought he saw Neil's up here somewhere, but that's impossible, isn't it? Neil's things have already been packed into the suitcases, retrieved by the Perrys, so there's no way anything up here belongs to Neil - but Todd can't help but look. 

Time stops when Charlie punches Cameron, and Todd wishes he could do something, anything, but he knows Cameron is right - Charlie has undoubtedly sealed his own expuision now and there isn't anything Todd can do to fix it. He didn't think Welton could dim any further, but it has. 

He used to look up at the impressive building and wonder what secrets it held. He'd never really wanted to find them - no, he'd rather read about them, or hear someone tell stories about them - until he met Neil. And then Neil left him alone and so did Charlie and now everything is in shades of grey and Todd just doesn't care anymore. 

The administration will do whatever they deem most appropriate, and Todd will have to go along with it because he's never had the courage to fight it - and look how well that worked out for Neil and Charlie, and he doesn't have anyone worth trying for anymore. 

Everything feels cold, like he's back in the snow on the grounds rather than in an attic warmed a little too much by the heaters in the school, trying to combat the winter air seeping in from all around. Todd wishes there was a way to stay in the good moments like this. Time only ever seemed to slow when the bad things were happening. 

There's ice in his veins now, but he has plenty of time to think and a quiet room where he can remember everything that brought him to this misery. 

Travesty and horror, indeed - Neil had that right.


	2. Gerard

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please join me in forever loving my boy gerard pitts because we do NOT see enough of him

He wants to believe that Richard will show up, that he's learning what the club means, that Richard has finally decided that they're worth the risk, but no such luck. So far, Charlie has been right - and Pitts wishes he wasn't. He remembers the night that started all of this - it was Charlie who told everyone (God knows how he found out in the middle of the night). 

Ordinarily, no one, except maybe Charlie, would be smoking in an attic in broad daylight, but nothing about this is ordinary, and Pitts knows this, but he still wishes for things to be the way they were before. The before wasn't perfect, but Pitts finds himself longing for the days before he started to question the pathway his father had laid out for him. Things hurt less there, because he felt less. 

He knows it's the same for the others. He saw the wonder in Neil's face the night of the play, and really, Pitts still can't understand how Neil went from the way he was under the lights, as Puck, to gone in a matter of hours. 

They don't know details, but that's not why they're up here, Pitts reminds himself. 

There are still six of them who stand to lose an awful lot if the club is discovered. And one of them might be betraying them as Charlie speaks, more bitter than Pitts has ever heard him, and just as Pitts can't reconcile Neil during the play with what he did after, he can't imagine the boy Charlie was in the cave, or even during the assembly (or after, when he recounted everything in such detail). He's been replaced by someone angrier, more serious, and Pitts again has to remind himself of the reason they are all up here, and that is because the one thing that brought passion into all of their miserable lives is at risk. 

Pitts doesn't regret going - though clearly Richard does. 

When Cameron shows up, it's with an air of false innocence, like he could possibly be genuinely happy when Neil is dead, and Pitts can't believe it. He thought the club would have shown Cameron what was important, like it did for the rest of them, but clearly it didn't. Pitts feels anger boiling under his skin, and he can't do anything because Knox and Meeks are holding Charlie back and he's hearing things that he wouldn't have blinked at a year, or even a few months, ago, but now they seem so absurd that he wonders how they have an entire school of boys blindly obeying such rules. 

He doesn't think Richard is callous, but he has betrayed them, betrayed Neil, and he has the nerve to call himself a victim. Now Charlie is going to be expelled - they all know the rules, physical violence means automatic expulsion - and there isn't a damn thing Pitts can do about it. 

Their group is down to four, and without Charlie and Neil, he doesn't think the rest of them know how to survive in this school. Charlie and Neil were here first, became friends first, brought the rest of them together with their light attitudes, and now, Pitts realizes it. 

Neil was always their leader. Keating didn't put them up to anything except for a semester of interesting English lessons - the rest was all them. Now all of them are down to four. 

Everything is silent now - Cameron has finally left, stopped subjecting them to his hateful words, and "Let Keating fry" is still buzzing in Pitts' mind, but it's far from the worst thing that's crossed it recently. 

Pitts looks over at Meeks, who is still holding Charlie back, like Charlie might do something even more exceptionally stupid like go after Cameron and punch him again, and Pitts needs to focus on something, anything, other than the fact that it's only a matter of time before Welton reverts back to the well-oiled machine it was before Mr. Keating arrived. 

Without Neil and Charlie, they don't stand a chance.


	3. Steven

"They need a scapegoat." 

Charlie is right about that - Meeks would be lying to himself if he tried to say that he hadn't looked for someone to blame for Neil. Publicly, the school can't chalk this up to one student taking a few English classes too much to heart. Meeks knows this is how they'll present it. As Keating's fault because it was Keating's ideas that made Neil think he could do it. 

Neil wasn't the only one. Meeks personally has never had a problem with the path in front of him - he likes engineering, likes understanding what makes things work, finds the whole thing fascinating. He knows not everyone does - neither of his boyfriends do. 

He can see Charlie's anger - he feels it himself, but he just stares at the floor and smokes. He wouldn't normally risk it, but "normally" was a long time ago and the rest of his world is about to go up in flames, so what does it matter? A few demerits are nothing compared to losing a friend. 

Maybe that's why the administration is so concerned, Meeks thinks. The Poets could very well fall completely apart and take the rest of the school down with them. Meeks doesn't think his friends will, but he didn't think he'd ever wake up to hear that Neil had _killed himself_ , so it isn't beyond the realm of possibility. He looks around the room at the rest of his friends - and he privately agrees with Charlie that there isn't a chance in hell that Cameron isn't telling Nolan everything as they sit and smoke and wait in the unbearable silence - and realizes that what they're waiting for isn't Cameron. 

__They're waiting for _anyone_ to come in here and break up the little bit of normal they can still find in each other, without Neil. It turns out to be Cameron who ruins it, but it could have been anyone. People don't normally come up here in the middle of term, but it's near the end of fall semester - there might be someone who needs one of their suitcases to pack for the holidays. __

____Meeks knows that once the Poets go home for break, it will be either too late or barely late enough. If nothing happens today, they're one step closer to staying here, together, and Meeks wants that like he hadn't known he could still want things without Neil around to encourage it._ _ _ _

____There are still people here who he cares about._ _ _ _

____He looks at Knox, focused on Charlie, clearly worried, and he wonders what any of them were thinking, risking this, risking _being together _. He knows now that it doesn't matter. Together, they got into more trouble than they'd ever been able to on their own - and it was so worth it.___ _ _ _

______Until Cameron shows up, and Meeks is reminded how strong Charlie is when it takes both him and Knox to keep him from breaking Cameron's nose. He hears Knox speaking next to him, hears Charlie's breathing, and knows that they don't stand a chance. Cameron has confirmed everyone's fears, and Meeks is afraid that no one but him has any reason to want to stay anymore._ _ _ _ _ _

______Neil was always the one that brought them together - including Cameron, planning study groups, everything that made him such a good friend to all of them, was gone, and Meeks is still here, with Knox and Charlie and Pitts, his best friends, and he's more than a little bit in love with Charlie and Knox, even now, and he knows that he'd do anything for either of them, even if it meant a lifetime of holding Charlie back while he shouted._ _ _ _ _ _

______Knox has always been better with words, and there isn't anything Meeks knows how to do that will help, can't even whisper that he loves them, because even up here, you wonder who might hear you. He knows he can trust Pitts - he would have been expelled several times over if Pitts was going to rat him out, at least for that, but Cameron is still here, and when Charlie punches him, the world stops again, because Meeks knows this is it._ _ _ _ _ _

______Cameron leaves with his words still hanging in the air, and Todd and Pitts are there with the three of them. Meeks wants to shout at them to go away, to leave him alone with the damage, but he can't. Especially not Todd, who understands them more than Meeks would have ever thought, but it was ToddandNeil from the beginning, and really, who is he to be surprised by that?_ _ _ _ _ _

______It's over, he knows. There's nothing left to do here._ _ _ _ _ _

______The silence rings out beyond their tiny attic room, and there isn't a damn thing Meeks can do about it._ _ _ _ _ _


	4. Knox

Knox can't bring himself to find joy in anything. He normally loves watching Charlie lounge somewhere like the place is his, even when it isn't, likes seeing him smoke without a care in the world, offering the cigarette to Knox if his eyes linger on it for too long. Now, even though Charlie is boiling with anger and still looks beautiful, Knox can't find it in him to appreciate it. 

Everything is over. Knox doesn't want to be a lawyer. He doesn't want a wife, doesn't want any of the things he's supposed to want, and now he doesn't have anyone to encourage him to go for it. 

Charlie's never been one for encouragement, he's always been one to lead by example, and Knox is afraid he won't be able to bring himself to even walk in the path Charlie burns for himself. He's a goddamn coward, trying to go after Chris, trying to convince himself that she was what - who - she wanted, and they've been too patient with him. He had the best damn thing that's ever happened to him, and he doesn't have the guts to go for it. He's terrified he never will, not without Neil or Mr. Keating to lead him in the right direction (and he knows without a doubt that the right direction for him is not the one Welton or his family has planned for him). There's a bitter air in the room while they wait, and there isn't any way to cut the tension. 

Pitts tries to talk to Charlie, but Charlie knows what Knox is still struggling to accept. It's over for them. Unless they rat, and Charlie, at the very least, will never do that. 

Knox has to try though. He knows from Neil and Todd that a love like what he has isn't worth throwing away with both hands, even if Knox doesn't have it in him to fight for it, he doesn't have it in him to push them away. He knows that between Charlie and himself, someone is going to get hurt. He isn't sure who. 

Knox sees the look on Cameron's face when he rounds the corner, and it's a good thing he's holding Charlie back, trying to talk him away from the edge, because without that to concentrate on, Knox would have punched Cameron himself. To hell with staying together, to hell with cooperating - Knox would have done it. Steven is there, too, and that's all Knox can allow himself to register because Cameron isn't making any sense and Todd and Pitts both look like they're about to break down and Knox can't blame them but he also can't help them. 

There's a ringing somewhere in his mind and he can't figure out how to shut it off. 

Charlie surges forward and Knox loses his grip on his shoulder and Cameron is spitting out words like they're poison and Knox knows there isn't any literal poison; it feels like his clothes are being eaten away anyway. 

He feels the layer of fog that's surrounded them since Charlie told them what happened, and he feels it settle around him more securely, either to protect him or to suffocate him, but does it matter anymore? Steven is standing next to him now, and he wonders what they're going to do without Charlie - because Cameron is right, he has essentially signed his expulsion papers. 

Cameron leaves, and the fog settles around the floor of the dusty space, and Knox still can't draw a full breath. Maybe it's a cigarette he was smoking. Maybe it's the dust. 

He doesn't know where Charlie is going to go next, only that Knox won't be able to follow him. 

When he is called out of his room later that afternoon, he knows Charlie is gone without asking. He hears the despair in Steven's voice and knows that going in there wouldn't help. He can't think of anything else to do, so he closes his door behind him and turns to the bed. 

As usual, nothing is waiting for him there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading this little story! I'm self-isolating at the moment and this idea just wouldn't leave me alone. Mostly because I have a lot of feelings about the poets in canon in general - and I really wanted to explore the perspectives of the characters other than Charlie and Cameron, since the scene is so centered on them. 
> 
> Also: Charlie/Meeks/Knox is canon now because I said so 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed!


End file.
